Shot down on 33rd mission, 23 July, ‘43 off
coast of Sicily, picked up and taken prisoner
by Italians, who later surrendered to F.0.
Rauth. (35, in fact, Made all papers as Sgt.
York of Air Corps). Returned to finish 46
missions in P-40.

Although officially a buck
Private, he "ran" a Detachment of 300 men.
Finally, after considerable bugging about his
"lost" records, he made it to SAACC in San
Antonio, as Aviation Cadet, Class 44-B.
He graduated from Single Engine
Advanced Flying School at Foster Field,
Texas on schedule but got stuck there as an
Instructor in AT.6's. He occasionally flew
P-40's and finally talked Lt. Col. Taute,
Operations and Training Officer, into letting
him fly their one P-47C.

I attended flight training in the Southeast
Training Command, graduated in the class of
43J, from Napier Field, Dothan, Alabama, and assigned as a fighter pilot whereas
my first flight in the P-47 was at Richmond,
Va., where I completed my transition in the
P-47 , assigned to gunnery school at Millville,
N.J., and left for overseas duty in February,
1944, and assigned to the 48th Fighter
Group, 494th Fighter Squadron, 9th Air
Force. I flew 83 missions, mostly dive bombing missions resulting the DFC and Air Medal with 14 clusters.

On 3rd October 1944, I was shot down by
the FLACK, during the attack of an
armoured column in Germany, and crashed
near Freiburg. Passing under a high voltage
wire, I swept several trees before I stopped at
the foot of a centenarian oak. Wounded by
shell splinters, I was lynched (left arm twisted, ribs broken a.s.o....) I stayed in jail for
a month before rejoining the Luft Stalag 1 in
Barth near the Baltic.

He performed early exploration of
transonic phenomena and their effects on
aircraft characteristics, and he was a pioneer
in the exploration of the effects of sweep-back on the low speed characteristics of aircraft, He is best known, probably, for his
pioneering in rotary wing and V/STOL aircraft aerodynamics, performance and handling characteristics.

Most memorable were: (1)flak removing
the upper portion of the rudder and stabilizer
and most of the supercharger area, (2)
groundlooping on A-13's wet steel mat with
armed live 500 pounders, (3) a belly-in, (4)
first drop of napalm, (5) vengeance destruction of flak towers which had just downed our recce P-51, (6) leading the strafing of the
Gutersloh Airport, (7) forecasting that
future war would involve jets, after turning
inside ME-163, and 262's.

Least forgetful: (1) burying GI's near
Rennes, (2) viewing the remains around a
previous days strafing, (3) weather during
the Ardennes, (4) destroying an FW-190.
Left active service Mar. 1946

He then went overseas to join the 365th
Fighter Group, 387th Squadron at Fritzlar,
Germany. During a landing, his plane was
overrun by another fighter that had tacked
on to his flight. The other plane's prop
chewed up the fuselage to the canopy -
tearing it loose and then veering off over the
right wing surface. Ed sustained a serious
head injury and was in a field hospital in
Kassel for 6 weeks. He then returned to his
group and subsequently spent 1 year in the
occupation force.

.........born in
El Paso, Texas, Feb. 12, 1917. But he was
actually born into the military, with a father
who was an aviation pioneer, a step-father
who was Air Commandant of the U.S. Marine
Corps, and his grandfather was an Army
Chaplain. George has a younger brother who
was a Marine Aviator. Following his destiny,
George graduated an Aviation Cadet from
Luke Field, Phoenix, Arizona in the class of
42J and commissioned Nov. 1942 as a 2nd
Lt. U.S. Army Air Corp.